A blog about adding home made lore and designing it to fit within the settings of already existent universes with a focus upon 40k. The concentration on style and design allows for its potential use within other systems as well. The goal is to improve fan-made lore and to flesh out powerful stories and characters with depth.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

So I'm going to keep
this one shorter because I am really freaking tired, its late, and its not like
there are actually any people that read this blog.So moving on:military culture goes hand in hand with the civilian culture and falls
under many of the same categories that you use when creating the civilian
culture.The personalities is more like
the common stratagems of generals, a typical day can still really help, the
military doctrine that is most strictly adhered to (what style of
fighting/discipline/how are things done on your planet military wise?).What sets this apart from the civilian culture
is its effect, the civilian bit is more of a backstory thing that you can refer
to for flavor or inspiration.The
military bits are going to have some serious effects upon your setting and how
things work, so you are going to want to really put some effort into the detail
of this and making sure things match up and are logical.When the future is only war, you really have
to know how your agents in the war are going to act or what their identity is
that makes them special upon the battlefield.

For the jungle
planet lets say that the poor suckers that fought against the Dark Eldar and
then the Eldar got screwed over due to their inability to adapt because of
traditional Imperial mantra.Perhaps
this is a very unconventional planet where regiments are given almost complete
control over their own actions with some guidance from high command to ensure
that the objectives are being taken.Furthermore the jungle fighting would be a prominent part of their
training and no doubt the guardsmen from this planet would be very skilled at
navigating in the most hostile and changing environments, able to set up
ambushes and avoid/overcome them as well, and close quarters fighting would be
a must because of the lack of open areas to even fire a gun more than 20 feet
in the jungle.Think Gaunt's Ghosts
except without the snipers and stealth and with much more ambush focused.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The shout outs will
keep coming the more people talk to me and let me join the ranks of their blog
networks.This time its for
International House of Paincakes, who are one of the most renowned blog
networks out there, they have probably hundreds of blogs with them, the
majority of them good (at least in my experience).So follow the link to their page on my
website by clicking the banner on the right and check them out.

While originally I
was going to continue the bit on culture but that will come after this
one.I was writing for the second
culture article (on military culture on a planet) but I realized while I was
doing it that so much of it was dependent on what had happened in the past of
the planet for the current style of how things work and people interact that
the history bit should be done after the purpose bit.So for all intents and purposes at the moment
consider the order for designing a planet to be ecosystem, geography, purpose,
history, and then culture.Writing this
blog is really helping me to develop my skills as well since I never really
documented how I did things like I am now, so with this new knowledge at the
front of my consciousness I will now continue.

History is going to
be one of the most important parts of your planet/city/nation/whatever the heck
you are scaling this series down (or up) to.This will give direction for personalities on the world and a certain mindset
that follows various events, perhaps helping you to make decisions on political
situations or current events that you were unsure of before.Defining the history requires taking into
account all the players that might have a part in events on the planet, being
the ecosystem, geography, things to fight for/over, people in the immediate
area or that have a stake in the place, and also potential random events.The potential of random events is nigh
unlimited, from natural disasters to warp storms to freak mutations to great
economic boom.Lets focus on the effects
of history upon the economy as this can change a lot of different things.If a planet ends up being well off throughout
history then its soldiers will be better equipped, its citizens happier and
healthier, every part of it would be bigger and in general better off, allowing
for facilities that might not be seen on poorer planets such as a fully
outfitted space port that is able to repair space cruisers or similar items
that require a significant deal of wealth.The events that might be more likely to happen in history when a planet
is wealthy would involve gangs and politicians that are economically powerful
and well funded, having battles for money and for the higher profiting markets
instead of the less profitable (though still nice) drug or slave trades.Pirates would probably be more apt to attack
the planet or ships near its space, perhaps the attention of Orks or other
xenos could be attracted because of the splendor of the region.If the planet is poor certain elements not
seen in wealthy places become commonplace such as disease and a very large and
dangerous crime world.People could be
reeling from a plague that killed billions of them due to poor living
conditions and bad medical facilities only twenty years ago or even several
millenia, the impact of that would have left a very long lived impression upon
the people.Gangs could have more
strength and influence in cities than the local militia because so many people
need to resort to crime to survive, perhaps gang wars are a permanent feature
in the hives, destroying a different block every day from the scale of the
battles.Finally chaos cults are far
more likely to permeate certain parts of society because of the lack of
imperial supervision over all aspects of society like they are in wealthier
settings, so potential demon incursions or just chaos uprisings against the
local forces have happened or are building up to the point that the current
event is the uprising.Defining how the
economy is or has been opens up avenues to take the planet's history down.

What defining the
history of the planet does is it provides support for future developments in
your setting, helping provide strong reasons for why things are as they are and
allowing for a natural progression of development with the planet.It adds an element to your story that you can
refer back to if you ever need inspiration on where to take your story when you
are at a dead end or having writer's block, perhaps it is something that your
characters can discuss and how the problems that they are facing are not new
but originate all the way from when the planet was first colonized.

The Jungle Planet
was settled to keep the Eldar in check so that brings one potential player and
event into play.Because it is a jungle
disease would be far more common and would travel far faster due to the high population
density of bugs that might carry bacteria or viruses.Settling the planet was never an economic
endeavor so the economy would be either poor or average, defining what kinds of
problems might have happened on the planet.Governors of the planet would almost always come from the Generals in
the Army or Navy, so how the leaders would react to problems could be
categorized and determined by the process of the military's procedures and
ideals.Based on all of this the planet
has been colonized for about 3000 years and a lot has happened in that
time.The initial claiming of the planet
took about four months, time where the Army was deployed onto the planet and
painstakingly searched the majority of its area seeking out potential
hostiles.After that time the engineers
and workforce were brought down and they cleared large swathes of land and
began building the structures and fortresses that are mostly still up
today.This took three decades to finish
the development of the planet, during which nothing significant really
occurred.This was followed by several
centuries of peace and boring history.After some time the Dark Eldar chose to make a raid upon the planet,
swooping in and terrorizing the place for about a week and kidnapping thousands
of people and taking much plunder before disappearing back into space without a
trace.Because of how the Imperium of
Man works and its propensity to blame the wrong people for everything they
became furious with the Exodites and so built up a massive force and prepared
to send out forces to attack the worlds.Because the Eldar are so psyker dependent and look into the future they
determined that they were going to be attacked and so the Exodites and two
craftworlds launched a preemptive strike against the planet, crippling key
ships and killing billions of guardsmen and thousands of tanks before the Eldar
finally were driven back.At this point
the defenses were rebuilt, the garrison reinforced by the local population as
well as by off world imperial guard soldiers, adding some more diversity to the
ranks of the soldiers.From here a cold
war with the eldar began where the imperium would put a massive army very close
to the eldar who would respond with a massive force of their own or some piece
of super technology and so on.This
continued for a while before a massive Ork Waaagh! Swept into the system having
been drawn by the escalating tension and seeing a potential for much fighting
and plunder.This unified the Eldar
Exodites and the Imperial administrators of this sector and so they fought the
Orks for several decades before finally ending the threat of the Orks.To this day Ork warbands still pop up on the
planet due to the spores created by the Orks that had gotten onto the planet
those millenia back.From there the only
thing that has happened is the building of a massive space port made to repair
just about any Imperial ship in the galaxy aside from those operated by the
space marines.

What happened after
this point now is current events which will be one of the last things we work
on for this planet.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Another shout out,
this time to the Warhammer 40k Blog network for taking me into the fold.I've checked out several of the blogs that
they have incorporated into their ranks and I liked most of those that I looked
at, so please check them out and support the blogging community like you have
supported me.

With the development
of Purpose and all that entails you can really begin developing the culture of
your planet, and this can be divided up into several groups, only one of which
I will cover with this post and go into the others with later posts (in fact I
won't even say what they are because I have yet to determine how much I want to
talk about these different subjects).The category of culture that I will delve into now is the culture of the
civilians, the ordinary citizens of your planet.By defining the culture of these people you
begin to give some direction to the character of your planet aside from its
anatomical nature, pointing out potential backgrounds and personalities for
where one of your heroes or villains in a story could have come from.Fleshing out who these normal people are also
can give a sense of what is at stake in a battle on the planet, details that
can be developed further in your story in something like a scene between
characters and some townsfolk or a protagonist speaking of their past and how
it made them who they are and why their planet is worth fighting over (for
those of us that need a cliché).The
elements necessary in designing the Civilian Culture require defining what
ordinary life is like for the civilians in general while making a note of other
smaller groups that are still significant for their differences and their
quantity even if they are not a majority (an example being a comparison of the
farmers of an agri world with the dwellers of the capital and center of
distribution, being the closest thing to a city the place has).Along with the everyday lives the specific
beliefs and customs can help add some flavor to the people, and defining
typical behaviors and characteristics of local personalities will create a
marked improvement on the overall detail of the planet.

As seems to be my
developing style I will now put this into an example format to show what I
mean.For the Jungle planet (I leave it
unnamed because I will probably run a poll or contest on naming it once it is
finished just for the heck of it, but I won't look at any suggestions now, I
don't want to give you guys an unfair advantage just because you found me
first) it has already been decided that because of the purpose of the planet as
a base to monitor the Eldar Exodites the people are used to discipline and
value work, effort, and accomplishments.That is a part of defining the typical characteristics though this can
be added to more now that I am specifically adding to them and not just showing
the effects of adding purpose to the planet.What can also be added reasonably to the personalities would be a
ruggedness of surviving the deadly jungle that ambushes everybody with its trickery,
a distinct distrust and wariness for anything unknown, and a belief in
self-reliance, a stubbornness to try and sort things out themselves without the
help of anyone else because they have always done that themselves and they have
never had the luxury of help to start with.Typical behaviors might include patrolling small areas that the person
is attached to and wants to protect from the constant change of the jungle, a
tendency to stay home alone or with only a few friends when any precious free
time is to be had, and in general checking up on things to make sure nothing is
out of shape so that they do not need anything more than they have to at any
time.Local personality types would
probably be quiet, independent, sullen, proud, stern, and stubborn, all
characteristics that they would have obtained from their constant battle with
the jungle and all that they have earned because of it.The everyday lives of people on this planet
would likely consist of several things depending on how long it has been since
the planet was colonized (we will say several millenia just for convenience's
sake, I will develop history in a later post as well, probably after this
section on culture).Because it has been
such a long time since it was settled and the Eldar haven't seemingly done
anything wrong (at least that hasn't been kept quiet and been handled behind
closed doors or with secret special ops) the military duties of the civilians
and the maintenance of the buildings would no longer be as stringent, now
people had only to focus upon their own lives and homes to keep.The man would wake up before dawn (since in
the 41st millenium feminism is dead and only men are worth anything for
whatever reason) and head out of his house with a machette and several sons.For two hours they would hack up and uproot
all the jungle that had tried moving near their home, garden, what-have-you,
burning the ground and plants if they were wealthy enough to afford the flamer
and promethium.After those two hours
they would head inside their house (the style of which will also be developed
later in time) and eat a breakfast consisting largely of nuts, berries, and
veggies due to the abundant presence of plants and the danger of hunting
animals - hence the lack of meat except on special occasions for families.From here the civilians would head off to
their various jobs of supporting the local services such as house maintenance
or being employed by the military to work logistics and have a desk job or
something like that.After a long
gruelling 13 hour day with a small 20 minute lunch break the family heads home,
eats a dinner similar to the breakfast (there would be little difference to the
families on switching the food in breakfast and dinner due to the presence of
only certain foods anyways though those ones are in abundance.After dinner the family moves out to hack up
and uproot plants again, and then they sleep until morning due to being
exhausted from their job and the cleaning of the jungle.One person in each household would stay awake
all night to protect from predators or dangerous plants that might get too
close to the house and prove to be poisonous or have very strong roots that
would be better removed before it became too attached to its current patch of
dirt.

The culture would be
greatly affected by the history of the planet, and this will be discussed at a
later time than this, but to reiterate the purpose of developing the civilian
culture is to provide the bedrock of what armies are fighting over or adding
background to the setting that can be drawn upon to make a very compelling
story or setting.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

First of all I'm
going to start with a shout out to Graven Games, it is an excellent blog that
reviews all sorts of products that support every aspect of the hobby and they
are an amazing source that is tremendously helpful for people of all types and
experience levels.Whether its terrain,
models that would make good proxies, or other services such as Battlescribe
they make sure to feed every hunger we gamers could possibly have.Maybe they'll write something on optimal
snack foods and drinks at some point! You can follow their link on the right hand side to check them out, which I strongly recommend.

This planet has
Geography and Ecosystem, and with those two established we want to determine
what makes this planet important from a sheer resource perspective.Why might the Imperium or any faction want to
colonize this planet in the first place?This is part of the steps on creating the history of the planet and not
just the current events.You can develop
those current events oftentimes based on what has happened in the past, what
have been issues that were common throughout the time before, etc.So what could have made this jungle planet so
important to the Imperium?Was it its
proximity to a cluster of Eldar Exodite worlds?Was this is a good position to launch off a conquering crusade and set
up a space port where goods and troops can go through because of its geography
on the planetary scale?Were certain
materials required to produce plasma or Titan's machinery present in the
soil?Any of these could serve for why
the world was claimed in the first place.Lets take the proximity to the Exodites idea for our jungle planet and
run with it.Because the Imperium was
worried about the Eldar and wanted this to serve as a military post in case the
xenos got out of hand or to keep an eye on them they would likely arrive on the
planet with a large contingent of soldiers, military fortifications, and
perhaps equipment for a listening post.The cities or towns that would exist on the planet likely were
originally fortresses and had a lot of history and discipline, so the people
that come from this world would be used to an orderly lifestyle.Luxury items and down time would not
necessarily be wanted for they were raised from the very beginning to work hard
because their ancestors had needed to work almost non-stop in order to clear
the moving jungle and keep it out.Imperial guardsmen from this planet would be very disciplined fighters
who would fight for however long it took and with all their strength until the
job was done.

The architecture of
the planet would have been very functional (due to it being a military post
above everything else) and taken up as little space as possible to reduce costs
- except where the generals and high ranking officers were concerned.Imperial Generals always deserve the best ;)
- though the materials used on the buildings are probably imported because the
building plans that are probably used throughout the imperium would have to be
adjusted to work with the wood and local stones, something that might not be
worth the effort.Culturally art would
be more of a practical thing, designing pieces that took less materials, space,
effort than other conventional pieces.Perhaps art would be seen as more simple things than paintings, say a
walkway or a wall, something we might consider to be abstract.

The importance of
the Eldar and the distance from them would mean that citizens would be
constantly vigilant for the inquisition of Ordos Xenos while the military was
always looking out for any potential xenos incursions or sympathizers.Psykers would be more abundant in this area
because the Imperium would ship them here to counter the psychic abilities of
the Eldar and they would be the extreme measures employed against them if the
situation became dire enough.Because of
the excess in Psykers there might be a significant presence of the Sisters of
Battle or the Ordos Malleus in an effort to protect the Psykers from Chaos
while also keeping an eye on them so that they don't go rogue.Because of the presence of several parts of
the inquisition there would be a lot of political intrigue going on and behind
closed doors diplomacy with back stabbing and the like on the imperial side.

Establishing purpose
lends itself towards accomplishing multiple things: creating history, opening
potential story arches through that history, further defining the surroundings
and the situation, and adding goals for the factions fighting upon the planet
to strive for.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

The ecosystem of a
planet and it's geography go hand in hand so these two steps can be switched if
you so desire when creating your planet.What the geography is going to define about your planet is how factions
present upon the planet might fight or where the battle lines are drawn or what
portions are important to fight over.For instant continuing with the jungle planet that I used as an example
in the previous post it is mobile but what if there was a raised plateau that
for some reason or another was untouched by the jungle.This would be the obvious place for a landing
zone for any forces and so the immediate vicinity would be hotly contested as
this would be the only way to bring supplies to your troops reliably without
risking the jungle ambushing your people sent to retrieve the supplies or
battling predators while trying to keep the landing zone secure so that the
planes can land safely and then take off again with as little difficulty as
possible.This raised plateau would
become fortified all over depending on the length of the conflict between
factions and so buildings may sprout up out of the earth everywhere that is not
being used for transporting food and ammunition.If this was a long time conflict areas could
be covered in rubble and unusable due to the undetonated explosives that could
be littering the ruins.

Another example
aside from a plateau is water and the use of oceans or lakes.Having separate continents could mean that in
a story there are several fronts on several land masses, allowing for the
development of a variety of generals or special forces that are particularly
skilled in one battleground or environment.Perhaps there are three continents and each has a different general
commanding them with their own brand of strategy.One utilizes typical Imperial tactics and
throws guardsmen at the enemy nonchalantly, achieving results quickly but with
many casualties.The second prefers to
fight with discipline and skill, employing special forces to sabotage enemy
vehicles, assassinate high ranking hostiles, or ambushing supply lines, taking
longer but getting results with less costliness.The final general may be fighting an entirely
defensive war, close to being overwhelmed at all times due to the high
concentration of enemy troops and he does not have the time or luxury of
planning ahead because the enemy continually attacks him from all directions,
forcing his forces to become self sufficient and act spontaneously in the
interest of survival.

The nature of having
these different generals and different battlegrounds could add some interesting
depth to your story or world as now there is are obvious players for political
intrigue and fighting within the same faction, constantly jockeying for political
dominance and attempting to beat the others in their efforts to demolish the
enemy.Geography can also provide a
practical method of defining how terrain in a battle should look if you want to
take it to the table top or in a map based campaign.Defining the parts of the world that are
important to the story or campaign means that this could so easily be adjusted
to fit the table top that it could make players more interested in your story
if they felt that they had a hand in the development in the world and that they
simply had to use the guidelines of the geography you created that
simultaneously had influenced the basic background of the world you were
focused upon.

Friday, May 25, 2012

A core part of the
40k universe is the diversity of planets and systems, how a planet looks, what
natural resources it contains, the climate and ecosystems it contains,
etc.Because of this I am going to begin
a series on how to design a planet (this could be scaled down to a nation for
games like Warmachine; I plan on doing a series on designing cities and towns
later).Where I like to start is the
ecosystem and life upon the planet.I
happen to really like Jungle planets like Catachan so we will run through what
should happen when designing a planet with jungle being the example I use.First what makes this jungle unique and
catchy, how do we want people to remember this planet's ecosystem and know it
isn't just jungle planet number 47?Perhaps we could make parts of the jungle alive in terms of plants that actually
are predators, or perhaps the plants are always moving so that paths are
constantly changing, putting predators in the path of travelers.I happen to like the idea of the moving
jungle that is consciously putting people in danger of predators so we will run
with that.

So what kind of
animals would thrive in an environment that is mobile and never static?They clearly must be either fast animals that
are able to outrun the predators when the paths lead to encounters with bigger
creatures.The top carnivores would not
have to be stealthy if the jungle was bringing everything to them, its biggest
asset would be sheer strength to take down other creatures.Because this is a jungle and there are all
sorts of plants that could ensnare animals perhaps some creatures use vines and
trap other things in simple nets or use tripwires, inhabiting the tree branches
above until their prey is caught.Being
slow means death in most cases so nothing would be particularly armored, just
well muscled and lithe to cause maximum damage quickly.Smaller, climbing creatures for the trees
that perhaps have similarities to monkeys, small and fast creatures that are
more cat like for the lesser predators, the top of the pyramid would be like a
bear combined with a komodo dragon for sheer size though faster and so would be
slightly thinner though still have ferocious teeth and claws.Poison would certainly fit within the
ecosystem as plants to fight the herbivores/omnivores while also perhaps
created in the glands of certain predators that are better at attacking and
retreating, followed by tracking their quarry till it dies and then consuming
it.

What happened above
was a series of developments that depended on reasonable conclusions as well as
certain design choices.Because I chose
to make the jungle move, I had to determine what characteristics would survive
and thrive in that environment.Finding
those characteristics of strength, speed, and agility I determined what the
different tiers of the ecosystem would work like and how they could interact
with each other.I even made sure that
parts of the ecosystem were a major part of how the animal's strategies for
survival would work in the case of the vine traps or the poison, something that
could also come into play in a story that you write with your characters from
off planet or on planet, a tool that could save or kill a character at some
point in time depending on your direction of story.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Already I've fallen behind on my goal for a daily post. I should be able to fix that tomorrow with a post that means something. I have a small piece I was planning on showing, but it is incomplete and I need to get some sleep before tomorrow. To better days of posting (for fun I will keep track of how many times I don't post daily with something meaningful).

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Beginning this blog
I think I need to quickly hash out what my niche is among all the blogs out
there for 40k and miniature wargaming.
The purpose of this is to write about the universe of 40k and expanding
it, sort of how Black Library is doing it.
Advice on how to add story to battles, create a theme for a campaign,
create some epic lore just because you love the setting of the 40k universe,
all this will be covered. Maybe I'll
throw in some stuff on tactics at random, but mostly this is going to be about
increasing the quality of fan-fiction and the lore. I hope that clears things up and provides
some more diversity to the miniature blogosphere, so here goes.

To begin creating
something entirely unique from a story perspective, devoid of any sort of maps
or factions (as unique as can be in a universe dominated by the Imperium) that
have been thoroughly developed by Black Library or other people it is best to start
with some questions. What is the
strongest cultural identifier for your story or setting? Is the focus of your creation the planet; a
faction on the planet political, military, religious, or otherwise; the story
you wish to create; a small group of characters that you will develop with time
and effort? What makes this so critical
is once you decide what is most important to you it becomes easier to spend
time on that and really flesh out the details such that your work becomes
something to be proud of and doesn't leave a disappointing taste in your
mouth. Before you dive into your project
make sure to have a strong understanding of your desires and goals, a roadmap
of where you want to take your work.